First, the planner shot a series of pictures from the windows of the school buildings where the scenario put the shooter. These were stitched together into wide panoramic photos using Panorama Maker 4 from Arc Soft. These images were then made part of the Quick Time Movie used during the exercise using Final Cut Pro from Apple. What the movie showed was what the shooter was, or would, see. Other images also showed the rooms where hostages were taken and shooting victims were.

Now while all of this was great for supporting the exercise and creating the realism, the location of this college was in a neighborhood area and the specific threat extended to the surrounding homes as well. So to present a complete situational picture, a 3D image from the Microsoft Virtual Earth website was captured and edited with Photoshop to show the areas of fire the shooter would have. By the way, the same image was not available in Google Earth Pro and there is no imagery for Street View from Google for here either.

A sample of how this looked is shown below.

This is a good example of how commercial tools can be used to support emergency planning through the use of Spatial Information. Now while one could say a college would have these resources, I think the total street price of these tools – Photoshop, Final Cut and Panorama Maker would be under $1500. Given that the software will last for at least 3 years and any good organization will be doing four exercises per year, then you can project the cost per exercise for this type of software is only about $150 – that is cheap. Combine that with web available imagery and it is amazing what you can do.

Now for those of you who know me you know that I do not endorse any product, I do not seek samples or freebies. I buy what I think I need, try it out, and if it works I praise it. If it does not, I may trash it, but then I may trash some of what I get as well. Since I bought it, I get to say what I want.

The GPS that does everything I need is the Garmin 60CSX. If I had listened to my buddy who uses these devices for border enforcement and tracking around the world I could have saved buying five other GPS devices – all of which worked, but did not do everything. I had bought units from Trimble, Garmin and Magellan. Hey, if Trimble or Magellan work for you, great. They did not work for me.

As far as Garmin is concerned, let me be brief – the Colorado is not mature and the ability to interface and pass data is, according to their support department “currently taken off the market due to some issues”. I do like the way the Colorado works with its wheel, but bottom line it is it did not cut it.

The 60CSX worked right out of the box, but I did not have the PC interface cable so I called Garmin to see what one I needed – well, I got the new guy. He told me to get the one that plugs into the USB port. Wrong. See when you need to output to a computer or camera you need to do that in NEMA, 4800 baud. The 60CSX requires a different cable for that. But, after I found that out from another Garmin tech guy, I ordered it and all is good – just wasted two weeks waiting for the wrong cable then the right one from UPS Slow Ground.

By the way, another side note on Garmin – they will nickel and dime you to death. I mean 400 bucks for a GPS and you have to spend twice that when you are done getting a few Garmin map sets, handle bar holders for bikes, data cables, holder for the car, the boat.

I started researching GPS information from REI and Fry’s Electronics. Forget Fry’s. For our REI store in Bellingham there is no one who has a clue beyond what the box says. In fact, after I got things worked out I was in REI and I ended up teaching two or three sales folks about Garmin GPS’s – basic stuff, stuff that they should know and stuff their Garmin Sales Rep somehow forgot to share – like you cannot do data sharing with the Colorado. Oh well he has a quota to fill and the Board of REI has to satisfy its stockholders. Can’t really blame them. If I wanted a definitive answer upfront I could have hired a consultant to tell me what was on the web.

Well, basically it came down to this – Microsoft’s Virtual Earth smokes Google Earth for imagery for the North Cascades on the US side of the border with very hi-res BW imagery. Google Earth however is better than Virtual Earth on the Canadian side of the border with moderately hi-res Color imagery.

Now since my client is interested in the US side, I have recommended they use Virtual Earth, but for cross-border operations (happens in search and rescue) you need both Virtual Earth and Google Earth. Thing is, you can do search and rescue planning on the US side with the Virtual Earth because of the hi res imagery, but even with the moderate hi res imagery in Google it is difficult as the imagery does break down relatively quickly.

If anyone wants the full 1900×1200 7 meg files, let me know, but your better off going to maps.live.com and going to the Gargett Mine (look at it in 3D) and comparing it to the Google Earth (I use the Pro version) for the same location. (Lat/Long is at top of post)

By the way, besides the obvious benefits of having the hi-res imagery from Virtual Earth for Search and Rescue, the 3D views of the area are outstanding. This has clear benefit as well for wild land fires.

A hurricane rips up the coast, and there are hundreds of damaged homes and businesses. As soon as the storm has passed, rapid damage assessment can begin. While it may not be possible to fully document every single damaged structure in a RDA, it is possible to use off-the-shelf technologies to be able to accurately show the effects of the hurricane world-wide, or to an invited audience.

I tested this over the weekend by using my Garmin Colorado GPS riding my bike for about four miles. I took a photo (ok, they were not hurricane photos, but hang in there) with my Nikon D300. Now I do not have the data cable to link directly from my Garmin to the D300 and that would be a pain anyway as far as I am concerned.

So when I got back to the house, I uploaded my photos, then I used GPS Photo Linker (free – but give him a donation folks – built by an Oregon State Grad Student, works on Mac or PC) and using the time of the photo to the time from the GPS track (I had to save it in GPX format) then I had a nice row of pictures geolocated and I could display them in Google Earth without any problem. I also used the same photos and GPX track file with Microsoft Pro Photo Tools which is also free as a download from Microsoft.  Of course, instead of Google and GPS Photo Linker where you have to view each image on the map, I liked the feature in side Pro Photo Tool that enables you to see the image on Virtual Earth as you embed the GPS data.  Also, what is even cooler is that Pro Photo Tool will also show the track from your GPS.

So getting back to my damage assessment example, immediately after the storm, on foot, on bike, or from a vehicle, you can use off the shelf GPS and cameras to provide web based damage details.  When published to the web, these individual records, tracks or albums can be linked to damage assessment records in tools like Essential Emergency in the Damage Assessment Object. This then not only provides one the damage records, but also the associated images and with Pro Photo Tool, the tracks (meaning the areas) that have been surveyed.

This utility permits the user to convert latitude and longitude between decimal degrees and degrees, minutes, and seconds. For convenience, a link is included to the National Geodetic Survey’s NADCON program, which allows conversions between the NAD83 / WGS84 coordinate system and the older NAD27 coordinate system. NAD27 coordinates are presently used for broadcast authorizations and applications.

FCC Lat/Long Conversion

I find it very useful when you are using Virtual Earth in 3D mode and you can take the lat/long from the lower right corner and plug in the values and get an address. Maybe someday Microsoft can put this feature into VE like they have in Streets and Trips.